Bus Rack Fail? Please Share Your Tales of Woe!

I commute from the northside to the south and back a couple times/week and often rely on a combination of my bike + the LSD express buses (#147 and #6) to shorten the commute time. Lately I've noticed that the bike racks on about half the buses are in a state of disrepair so bad I cannot put my bike on it at all (i.e., completely twisted and bent racks).

In one case, I put my bike on a sketchy rack and then had a bus driver tell me not to risk it and he had me get off at the next stop! The bus drivers I've talked to have suggested that I contact the CTA but that I also go through "that bicycle group" (I'm assuming she meant Active Trans.)

I'm thinking I'm just going to start taking pics of each twisted bus rack with my phone  (helpfully, the vehicle # is always at the bottom right of the bus windshield so each pic will be "self-labelled")

I thought that it might make a stronger case if there were more complaints than just mine... will you please either post your stories here (ideally with bus vehicle #, route # and date) and I'll pass them on or send the CTA a message yourself? Maybe if they start receiving a pile of complaints we can escalate a work order before the snow really starts to fly...

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Permalink Reply by Erik Swedlund on November 15, 2011 at 10:06am

On August 11, 2011, I sent the following email to feedback@transitchicago.com:

The inner bike rack on bus 4104 (I'm currently riding it as route 6 sb to Hyde park) has a broken spring arm (the yellow arm that goes over a bike's front wheel).  Luckily I was able to use the other spot for my bike. Thought I would let you know, if reports like this can help speed maintenance.

On August 15, I received this reply:

Thank you for your comments. We have forwarded your information to the responsible General Manager for appropriate action.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

CTA FEEDBACK TEAM

Permalink Reply by Melanie K on November 15, 2011 at 2:44pm

About two weeks ago my neighbor told me she put her bike on a "kinda" wobbly rack.  She asked the driver if the rack was solid, and he told her it would be fine. A few blocks later she heard a screeching/crunching sound, the bus came to a stop, and her bike was under the bus. She has commuted by bus and bike exclusively for many years, so she definitely put it on the rack correctly. From hearing her story, I am extremely leery about putting my bike on any city bus again.

Permalink Reply by Mike Zumwalt on November 15, 2011 at 2:54pm

The 147 takes a bit of abuse and if you get the older style with the compression holder that fits only on the front/top of the tire and not the yellow spring loaded OVER the tire it's likely to fall off.

 

I usually take a bungee cord to attach as well. More than one occasion the driver has mention it looks wobbly might fall off, not too mention waiting in the winter then finding it unusable.

 

If it flies off during a 147 trip your out of luck.

Permalink Reply by 2wheels4eyes on November 18, 2011 at 5:03am

Ah, this is very helpful--I had posted in the hopes that someone here would know if there was already some effort in place to track these issues. I don't mind following up with the CTA bike-n-ride person, but don't want to reinvent the wheel either. Do you mind sending me a message with whatever info or contact names you've already got? I have not contacted Active Trans yet either as I was waiting to see if there were other riders having problems with the racks.

 

h' said:

Thanks for writing but what's needed is an ongoing effort to collect and track these problems to see if they're actually addressed.


When they were first implementing the racks Bob Matter and I kept a list of problems and were able to spot buses that had the same problem after weeks or months still and get extra attention to them.


I have too many projects to take something like that on now-- Ideally someone else would be willing.

 

"That Bicycle Group" could help by letting us know how we can communicate with who-ever's wearing the Bike and Ride hat within the CTA at the moment;  A while back they made it impossible to contact them directly by adding a whitelisting process that no-one seemed to be managing on the CTA end.

Permalink Reply by Steven Vance on November 18, 2011 at 7:33am

The CTA confirmed with me that they indeed fixed a bus rack problem. 

Here's the story:

March 5, 2011: I send CTA an email (to feedback@transitchicago.com) saying bus 1087 has bike rack issues. I described them in pretty good detail. 

March 7, 2011: CTA responds to me via email and says they've forwarded my message to the appropriate General Manager. 

March 16, 2011: CTA responds to me via email (again, without my prompting) saying the bike rack has been replaced. 

 

feedback@transitchicago.com is the email for any and all issues/concerns. They even helped narrow down a problem I was having with Bus Tracker by Text Messaging. 

Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on November 18, 2011 at 7:37am

Thanks Steven!

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